#catherine staples

[the-final-sentence]

You swallowed the long winter— and his lost vigor flew through you.

Catherine Staples, from “Dear Henry,”

[violettesiren]

As in green, vert, a royal demesne stocked with deer. Invert as in tipped as a snow globe, going nowhere in circles but not lost, not bereft as the wood without deer, waiting for the white antlered buck, or his does, or any slim yearling to step along the berm, return. Vertigo as in whirling round, swimming in the head, unanchored by the long spring, the horse cantering, the meadow dropping like an elevator into the earth, falling like Persephone through a crevice, a swiveling crack, a loose screw, a lost way. Disordered as in death lasts, my brother’s not coming back. The spin of it continuous as in looking down from height, and then it stops, the spinning just slows, a chariot wheel stilled in grass. The world is the same, but it isn’t. The tipped views of trees when hanging from your knees. The deer in twos and threes watching.

Vert by Catherine Staples

[whisperthatruns]

As in green, vert, a royal demesne stocked with deer. Invert as in tipped as a snow globe, going nowhere in circles but not lost, not bereft as the wood without deer, waiting for the white antlered buck, or his does, or any slim yearling to step along the berm, return. Vertigo as in whirling round, swimming in the head, unanchored by the long spring, the horse cantering, the meadow dropping like an elevator into the earth, falling like Persephone through a crevice, a swiveling crack, a loose screw, a lost way. Disordered as in death lasts, my brother’s not coming back. The spin of it continuous as in looking down from height, and then it stops, the spinning just slows, a chariot wheel stilled in grass. The world is the same, but it isn’t. The tipped views of trees when hanging from your knees. The deer in twos and threes watching.

Catherine Staples, “Vert”